Their Eyes Were Watching God



Their Eyes Were Watching God

by Zora Neale Hurston

Advanced Placement in English Literature and Composition

Study Guide

Chapter 1

1. Why does Hurston open the novel with an analogy? What authorial purpose does it serve?

2. What conclusions can you draw about Janie Starks, her character, and the events in her life based on the dialogue of her neighbors?

3. How does Hurston's narrative voice differ from the dialogue of her characters?

4. In what sense does the novel begin at the end of Janie's story? What is the literary term for this type of structure?

Chapter 2

1. How does the pear tree symbolize Janie's quest for self-fulfillment?

2. How does Hurston reveal Nanny's motivation for forcing Janie to marry? Is that motivation pure, malevolent, or something in between?

3. While Hurston achieved success in so-called "white publication" and received critical acclaim from white critics, her black contemporaries harshly criticized her and her work. What events in Janie's life parallel this situation?

Chapter 3

1. How, and why, do Janie and Nanny differ in their ideas of love?

2. Describe the prevailing tone of this chapter. Identify the elements that set the tone.

Chapter 4

1. What does Joe (Jody) Starks represent to Janie?

2. How does Jody's character begin to establish Hurston's theme of male dominance and aggression? Contrast this with Janie's first husband, Logan Killicks.

3. What symbolic meaning does the horizon begin to assume?

Chapter 5

1. What type of power does Jody come to represent in the scheme of the book?

2. In what ways does Hurston relate power to language?

3. How does Jody attempt to control Janie? Does he ultimately succeed?

4. What does Janie's hair symbolize?

Chapter 6

1. Why do you suppose Hurston uses the third person narrator to reveal what Janie is thinking while using dialogue to allow us to get to know her husband and the other Eatonville residents?

2. What is the significance of Janie's verbal outbursts to the gathering on the porch?

3. What conflict does the conversation between Pheoby's husband and Lige Moss center around? How is it significant to the developing theme of the novel?

4. What motivates Jody to suppress Janie?

Chapter 7

1. In what way does Janie reassert herself in this chapter? How does Jodie react to it?

2. What potential foreshadowing regarding Jody can be found in this chapter?

3. What is the significance of the allusion: "The thing that Saul's daughter had done to David" (pg. 79)?

Chapter 8

1. What do the following metaphors that begin Chapter 8 suggest? "He had crawled off to lick his wounds." "But the stillness was the sleep of swords." "Well, if she must eat out of a long-handled spoon, she must." (pg. 81)

2. What does the narrator reveal about Jody that Janie does not know?

3. How is the couple's situation ironic? What type of irony is it?

Chapter 9

1. Why does Janie burn her head rags?

2. Why does Janie hate her grandmother?

3. Explain what Hurston means by saying that Nanny choked Janie with the horizon. Did Nanny intend to hurt Janie?

4. How does Hurston weave folklore into this chapter?

5. Why does Janie discourage all of her suitors?

Chapter 10

1. Why is the checker game between Janie and Tea Cake significant?

2. What is Tea Cake's real name, and what does he look like?

3. Describe the overall tone of this chapter. How do the attitudes of Janie and Tea Cake affect the tone?

Chapter 11

1. How does Tea Cake fulfill Janie's original youthful yearnings under the pear tree?

2. What conflict does the following passage reveal? Analyze the tone of the following passage. What element creates the tone?

In the cool of the afternoon the fiend from hell specially sent to lovers arrived at Janie's ear. Doubt. All the fears that circumstance could provide and the heart feel, attacked her on every side. This was a new sensation for her, but no less excruciating. If only Tea Cake would make her certain! He did not return that night nor the next and so she plunged into the abyss and descended to the ninth darkness where light has never been. (108)

Chapter 12

1. How does Pheoby play the role of devil's advocate in this chapter?

2. Compare and contrast Janie's feelings toward the community—as represented by the porch gatherers—when she was married to Jody and now that she is with Tea Cake.

Chapter 13

1. After Tea Cake and Janie marry, why do you suppose she keeps silent about the $200 she has hidden in her clothes? Is this behavior consistent with Janie's character?

2. Explain the significance of Mrs. Tyler to the plot line.

3. What is significant about the fact that Tea Cake refuses to touch Janie's money and insists that he will provide for her?

4. What is ironic about Tea Cake's determination to provide for them?

Chapter 14

1. What contrasting ideas dominate this chapter?

2. What do these ideas represent to Janie?

3. How and why is this change in setting significant to the plot?

4. How is this move to the Everglades significant to the structure of the narrative?

5. What symbolic significance do the Everglades take on?

6. What might Tea Cake's teaching Janie to shoot symbolize? How is the fact that Janie becomes a better shot than Tea Cake significant?

8. What is Hurston establishing by having Janie go out to work with Tea Cake?

Chapter 15

1. Why does Hurston devote this chapter to Janie's jealousy of Nunkie?

Chapter 16

1. What subtle shift in narration occurs in this chapter?

2. What authorial purpose does this change in narrative voice serve?

3. Contrast the new, more sympathetic narrative voice with the formal, poetic voice used at the end of the chapter.

Chapter 17

1. Is Tea Cake acting out of character when he beats Janie?

2. Why do you suppose Janie remains silent in the face of Tea Cake's physical abuse?

Chapter 18

1. In the face of the hurricane, how does Tea Cake's belief system reveal itself to mirror that of Jody Starks?

2. What practical role does the hurricane play in the narrative structure of the novel and the development of the novel's theme?

3. In what way is the hurricane the high point of Janie's and Tea Cake's relationship?

4. How does Hurston revisit the theme of community before, during, and after the hurricane?

5. How does Hurston once again weave folklore into the narrative?

Chapter 19

1. How is Motor Boat's survival ironic?

2. What is the significance of the instructions given by the white workers to the black men they forcefully enlisted to help bury the dead?

3. What do the circumstances of Tea Cake's death illustrate about Janie?

4. Why does Hurston have Tea Cake's death run as it does: the three empty chambers in the gun, Janie's hesitation to fire her rifle, etc.?

5. How does Hurston establish Janie's powerlessness as a black woman in white society?

Chapter 20

1. Besides Janie's desire to plant the seeds in remembrance of Tea Cake, what do the seeds represent?

2. What unifying theme comes full circle in Janie's revelations to Pheoby?

3. As Janie returns to the bedroom she last shared with Tea Cake, what symbolic quest finally ends?

4. Hurston enhances her frame narrative with her expert use of imagery Relate the imagery with which Hurston begins the novel with the imagery with which she closes the novel.

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I recommend NOT reading the questions ahead of the chapters because of spoilers in the questions.

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